“Why on earth,” a colleague asked, “would you want to write about Gustave Moreau?” The answer, I think, is plain to anyone interested in the byways of twentieth-century art; Moreau (1826–1898) is an obligatory footnote in art history texts because of his role as the teacher of Henri Matisse. (Georges Rouault and Albert Marquet were also pupils.) In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition “Gustave Moreau: Between Epic and Dream”—seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 1 to August 22— Douglas W. Druick, Senior Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, writes that “Moreau’s dream of a symbolic language found its true voice” in “the joyous color, graceful arabesques, and decorative sensibilities of Henri Matisse.” The organizers of the show seek to establish Moreau as a pivotal Modernist antecedent—by linking him not only with Matisse, but also with the Symbolists, the Surr ...

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